Before falling asleep, JD had quickly scanned the files from Soo-hyun, studying the schematics and timetables as though they were a puzzle to be solved, rather than evidence of a planned crime. Without the official access he would normally receive along with a city repossession order, he’d need help bypassing the target’s security, and there was only one person he could trust with that.
He took the phone from his pocket and checked the warehouse’s robot uptime app. Everything was green, including the Hippo repairer, but he marked himself as on-call just in case. Next, JD scrolled through his contacts, dodging around a small group of children trudging off to school with cube-shaped backpacks larger than them. He found the name he needed and hit call; the phone rang in his ear like a digital cicada.
“Khoder, I need to talk to you. In the real.”
Pain speared up his leg with every step, but JD couldn’t slow down. He felt like bacteria in the body of the apartment building—alien, unwanted. His heart thudded hard and already moisture gathered in his armpits.
“I’ve got your money,” he said loudly over Khoder’s excuses. “Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll come to you.”
The city shook on digital frequencies as JD made his way to the Varket. Glass facades shuddered with the oscillating purr of bass-heavy beats. The music would spike, then drop, silence like held breath. When the beat returned Songdo exhaled. The sovereign city was home to countless minorities; words from a myriad of languages drifted through the air, mingling to form an indecipherable ur-tongue. Spoken Korean dominated, but in business signage, private conversation, and scattershot insults, everything was being steered toward the entropy of English, the language of globalization.
JD diagonally crossed the intersection where the Egyptian and Ethiopian quarters met, car horns adding to the Ethiopiyawi electronica emanating from a bustling hookah bar, filled with figures in black and charcoal suits. Spice-thick cuisines battled in the air, and everywhere the flat scent of old fry oil edged with engine exhaust and heavy metal particulates. The saltwater scent, carried in on a breeze, brought small respite from the constant garbage smell of the city—green, trash-free plans abandoned when Songdo hit the first of its financial hurdles. The smell was one thing Zero Corporation couldn’t augment; otherwise they might censor the scent of Korean cooking, emanating from pojangmacha stalls and restaurants all through the city, a mouthwatering reminder that Korean culture had survived longer than any corporation, had survived thousands of years of worse than whatever Zero could do to the city.
An AR billboard on one side of the intersection showed the faces of criminals with outstanding warrants—jaywalkers, sexual predators, and violent gangsters, all caught on CCTV but never apprehended. On the building opposite, a video of Kali played: smiling, talking emphatically to a gathered crowd. “Find Truth,” the ad suggested, “Find Happiness,” and a link to her Livideo feed. JD shook his head and kept moving.
Two blocks further, JD stood across from the Varket, the scarlet glow of its anachronistic neon sign calling to him. He dodged between two cars as the ground flared red beneath his steps. He let the momentum carry him past the bugzapper hum of the sign and in through the first door, into the vantablack foyer. The walls seemed infinitely distant, his steps awkward over a floor that his eyes didn’t want to see. He groped forward until his hand touched the second door; he yanked it open and stepped inside.
The Varket was a favored hangout of hackers and hopefuls, freelance share traders, and voidwarriors; lowest ping you could find outside a corporate compound. The soundtrack droned its oppressive, beatless ambient mantras with the scratch and hiss of analogue tape, heavy enough to shroud discussion.
JD went straight for the counter. The bartender slash barista had an asymmetrical fringe over eyes darkened by makeup or exhaustion. He wore a black cotton dress, or overly long T-shirt, stained with bleach and precisely threadbare, his ochre skin showing through in a snakeskin pattern. His prosthetic left arm rested along the back wall, plugged in and charging, blinking light reflected off a row of bourbon bottles—the kind of cheap swill you’d only drink when you had something you needed to forget.
“What’s your poison?” he asked.
“Coffee, black. Thanks,” JD said.
“Not dexy? It’s cheaper.”
“Nah, I like my teeth how they are.”
The barista nodded and started at the espresso machine, single hand working the controls with practiced ease. Half the grounds were recycled, the other half a blight-resistant GMO strain, but it was the closest thing to real coffee that JD could afford anywhere in Songdo-dong. He had briefly considered spending some of the down payment on a cup of the real stuff, but that would have meant going out of his way. Maybe next time.
While he waited for his drink, he turned to lean against the bar and survey the crowd, elbows jutting behind him to rest on the sticky countertop. The faint hum of hustle scraped beneath the wall of noise. Illegal wares were traded overtly in dim-lit booths, black marketeers peddling counterfeit ships, swords, and other loot to desperate gamers—best drops in any game, good for use right until your account was banned for life. Perfect for the suicidal, the terminal, the given-up. Three technicians took up an entire booth each, tools and discarded silicon splayed across the tables: desperate people approached them with ancient phones and rigs held together by thousand-mile-an-hour tape and chewed-up screws, batteries failing, processors overheating the moment they touched VR. The techs never lifted their eyes, focused solely on the body and soul of each broken machine.
There was the dull clatter of ceramic as the barista deposited JD’s coffee. He swiped his hand over the cashpass and it beeped in acceptance.
The barista raised an eyebrow. “Implant?”
JD nodded.
“Careful it doesn’t rot your arm off.”
JD’s eyes flicked to the prosthetic along the back wall. “Is that—” The rest of the question died on his tongue as JD hesitated,
